I agree with the above comment. These seven criteria of USAID looks good and useful in general. But the complexity of identification of indicators could vary from fields to fields. For example, I work in the field of Human Rights . My country has a poor record of human rights. Government as well as the society still widely find the language of human rights as a sensitive topic which is a major challenge that we face in making progress with our projects. Through such projects/programs in this field I have been in some situations which the indicators identified would not be able to meet all or most of these criteria above. So my question here is the minimum criteria out of these seven, to qualify as 'strong indicator'? What could be they? Are there any other standard criteria globally bing used?